We Asked 30-Plus 30-Year Olds: Are You Turning Into Your Mother?

The everyday/extraordinary women we profiled for This is 30 seem, in many ways, all grown up. But what exactly have they grown into? We asked them about inevitable parental comparisons.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"My parents are Buddhist and I was raised in this kind of hippy culture of Boulder, Colorado, and I always pushed away from it and thought it was really weird. ... As I've gotten older and living in a city like New York, I feel like the perspective I have of what my parents taught me and the groundedness I feel when I'm around them has really started to influence the way that I live my life here. So, I've embraced a lot more of my Boulder upbringing as I've gotten older. Whether that's my mother or my father, both, I think is certainly fair to say." - Marissa Vosper, co-founder of Negative Underwear

"Oh, the minute I found out I was having a girl, I completely forgave my mother for all the fights we had in my adolescence and high school or college. ... Helping me with my two daughters means my mother walks on water. She was such a great example to me of how to be loving and strong and supportive. She helped me believe that I could be anything I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. ... If I can be half the mother that my mother is, I will be so happy." - Molly Watman is the co-owner of The Brooklyn Herborium

"I hope I'm turning into my mother. I think so. She's the greatest and we have an incredible relationship. She's warm, loving, thoughtful, patient, selfless, funny, and loyal. I couldn't have asked for a better role model." - Danielle Snyder, co-founder and creative director of the New York-based jewelry brand, Dannijo

"I'm probably turning into my grandmother. But every time I buy a sweater in two colors, I cringe because I think that's what my mother would do. I think we all kind of turn into our mothers I guess." - Ana Maria Celis, a specialist in the Post War and Contemporary Department at Christie's Auction House

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"I hope that I'm turning into her in the good ways. She was an incredible mother. Very loving and very dedicated. And I hope to be half as good as she was with me and my sister. And in other ways, no, because she was very much a homebody, and she was a stay-at-home mom, and even though she might have had career goals, she sacrificed everything for us. And that's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to juggle both." - Carla Measer-Costamagna, a Buffalo-based wedding planner and designer

"Definitely turning into my mother. I look exactly like her. My mother liked her glass of red wine. And it's just her routine thing, watching the TV every night, and it's definitely become my routine thing." - Jac Cameron, co-founder and design director at AYR

"I feel like I'm turning into my mother when it comes to skincare, because she is absolutely obsessed with skincare. She has crazy amounts of steps. I used to watch her apply product after product, and the older I get, I definitely have more steps that are being added to my regimen. And I'm definitely that girl on the beach, like with the hat and the sunscreen SPF 55 and an umbrella. You know? But I hope to one day maybe have as many steps as my mom, we'll see. Getting there though." - Nina Park, celebrity makeup artist

"I am not turning into my mother. But I hope I do, because she's awesome and amazing, and a true role model. My mother thinks she's 21. She has more energy than anyone I know. She cares for her family so deeply and so passionately and unconditionally, and she raised me so I think she did a pretty good job. In my 30s I appreciate my parents even more than I did when I was younger...I understand that they're just like us, figuring things out as they go, making choices that they think are going to be positive for themselves and their family. But ultimately going through life without any more experience than we have as we make choices in our life." - Farryn Weiner, Vice President of Marketing & Brand Innovation for sweetgreen

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"I think in some ways I'm turning into my mother. She's really strong-willed and finds little ways to kind of disrupt what it means to be an Indian woman, and I think in that sense I'm turning into my mother, which is really awesome." - Diya Vij, is the Digital Communications Manager at NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

"I think I am a little bit, just in a very small sense. I am not taking shit from people, the way that she doesn't. I never thought I'd be that person. I used to be really like, okay, I'm just going to let this go. Water off a duck's back. But I just hope that that's the only part of me that's just like my mom. But I think we're pretty disparate. We're very separate for sure." - Tiffany Roth, a singer/performer

"I think that in many, many ways coming into my own adulthood has allowed me to be at peace with the way in which my mom and I are really similar."

"Probably more than I realize. Up until I was in my 20s I was playing the bass guitar that my mom was playing when she was my age, taking photographs with her 35mm camera that she was shooting on when she was in her 20s and 30s. Her name is Sandra, my name is Cassandra. I feel like I've always been an extension of her. But more recently it's really hitting home because when my mom was in her 20s, she met my dad. They started a band together and went on tour and when they were 35, that's when they got married and had kids. And for me, that's four years away. That's always been a little bit of my internal timeline. A couple of years ago I met my boyfriend. We are in a band together. We're definitely touring together and making this record together. I still wear a lot of my mom's clothes from the '70s and '80s. And so feeling like my mom has never been like a strange thing to me. But maybe, you know, seeing ways in which our bodies are very much the same, seeing mannerisms and things like that that other people point out to me is always strange. We have very similar voices. Especially when we sing." - Cassandra Jenkins, a Brooklyn-based musician

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"I think that we all have a bit of our mother and our father in us. I see myself really using the wisdom my mother instilled in us at a young age, and I see it coming out in my business interactions and my personal interactions. I don't know if I'm turning into her. I don't know if she'd want me to turn into her because she wants us to be our own person." - Lauren Imparato, founder of I.AM.YOU. a NYC based yoga studio

"I think that in many, many ways coming into my own adulthood has allowed me to be at peace with the way in which my mom and I are really similar. It was absolutely a difficult road. Because I think we all want to be unique and different and then it's always so hard when somebody says you're just like that other person. And you want to be your own person. I think for a long time I fought against being too much like my mom. And now I'm really honored when people compare me to her. I think she's a tremendously strong person. There are some ways in which I will never be exactly like her. I'm black and she's a white Jewish woman. So I'm black Jewish and she's white Jewish and so there are ways in which our identities can never be fully collapsed on each other." - Ashley Paige White-Stern, a second year medical school student

"Oh my God. I'm totally turning into my mom! I was on Facebook a couple of days ago, and my friend put up an album and I 'liked' 30 pictures in a row and was commenting on all of them. It was so something my mom would do. I'm always getting 100 notifications from my mom, and I'm like, "You need to chill out." And now I've completely turned into her. It's scary." - Lauren Edelstein is the style director at Shopbop.com

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
ELLE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.